Clapper admits NSA should have been ‘transparent from the outset’ on surveillance

James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, waits for a hearing of the Senate Judiciary on Capitol Hill October 2, 2013 in Washington, DC.

The Director of National Intelligence has admitted that, in hindsight, the US intelligence community would have been smarter to disclose some details about how telephone records belonging to millions of Americans have been collected for years.

Perhaps more than any other Obama administration official, James
Clapper has been the target of the most criticism, sarcasm, and
outright fury since Edward Snowden leaked a trove of classified
National Security Agency documents. He has staunchly defended the
government’s interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act,
under which it argues that secret collection of phone data is
legal.

Now, in an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Clapper
appears to have admitted that many of the problems currently
plaguing intelligence community are self-inflicted and could have
been avoided.

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will,” Clapper
said Monday. “Had we been transparent about this from the
outset right after 9/11 – which is the genesis of the 215 program
– and said both to the American people and to their elected
representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure
this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to
set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it,
and here are the safeguards…We wouldn’t have had the problem we
had.”

The director went on to say that the Snowden leaks has been a
painful learning experience, adding that the ongoing public
debate about security vs. privacy would not be going on had the
government been forthright with the American people after the
terrorist attacks on September 11.

“What did us in here, what worked against us was this
shocking revelation,” he said. “I don’t think it would
be of any greater concern to most Americans than fingerprints.
Well people kind of accept that because they know about it. But
had we been transparent about it and say here’s one more thing we
have to do as citizens for the common good, just like we have to
go to airports two hours early and take our shoes off, all the
other things we do for the common good, this is one more
thing.”

Clapper was a prominent target of critics of domestic
surveillance and the press at large because of his claim at a
congressional hearing months before the Snowden leak that the
government does not collect information on millions of Americans.
The response to that question, posed by longtime NSA opponent
Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore), has led legislators and privacy
advocates calling on Obama to fire Clapper and reform the
surveillance apparatus.

Since his embarrassing misstep was first revealed Clapper has
made public scores of documents and opinions written by the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has consistently
authorized the phone collection program. He told The Daily Beast
those pages are proof that Section 215 is not an unchecked
imposition on Americans’ civil liberties.

“For me it was not some massive assault on civil liberties
and privacy because of what we actually do and the safeguards
that are put on this,” he said. “To guard against
perhaps these days a low probability but a very (high) impact
thing if it happens…I buy fire insurance ever since I retired,
the wife and I bought a house out here and we buy fire insurance
every years. Never had a fire. But I am not gonna quit buying my
fire insurance, same kind of thing.”

Clapper’s admission Monday that national security officials would
have been better served to be more open about domestic snooping
was welcomed by his usual critics. Ben Wizner, the director of
the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and
Technology Project who also serves as legal counsel to Edward
Snowden, said the director’s comments are fair.

“If Clapper is suggesting that the American people should
have been consulted before the NSA engaged in a mass phone call
tracking program, I empathetically agree,” he told the Daily
Beast. “Whether we would have consented to that at the time
will never be known, we are now having a debate in Congress and
in the courts that we should have had then.”

As for why Clapper told a congressional hearing that the NSA was
not collecting data on Americans, the intel chief says he
“misunderstood” the question.